Kinderling 29

   In case you are interested in starting this story at the beginning, Kinderling 1 can be found here:

The Tricycle of Thought: Kinderling 1

Please don't judge the story or the writing too harshly, this story is written with little to no editing.  It is just meant to get me writing regularly for practice.  

Now back to our story, already in progress...

The tunnel that Mama and I were faced with was rough hewn from the rock.  It was plenty big enough for me, I'm small.  Mama's head, on the other hand, almost reached the ceiling.  

"I think the way ahead has a shallow incline, and twists to the right a bit."  I told Mama.

"Agreed."

The rough hewn tunnel eventually let out into a natural cavern that lead on, rising more quickly.  The climb wasn't hard, there were places where we - or at least Mama - had to squeeze through, but most of it was walkable.  It did seem to go on forever though.

After a while, we finally came upon  evidence that someone had past this way before.  We stopped for a rest on a nice smooth bolder, perfect for sitting on and having a snack.  I put a string on my floating light and tied the other end to a rock in order to light up the area.  Off to the side, I saw an ancient bag that had been left by some long ago traveler.  It was falling apart and it's contents had turned to dust long ago, but it gave me hope that we were on the right track.  After all, who would leave a bag in a tunnel that went nowhere?

After a rest, and some food and water, we continued on and soon had to start climbing as our path curved sharply upward.  I was thankful for the floating light on a string, I just tied it to my backpack and had my hands free to climb with.  After a short time, I made a realization.

"Mama, why are we climbing?"  I asked.

"Our path goes up that way."  Replied Mama pointing, not catching my meaning.

With that, I pulled out my go-stick and hopped on.  After all the practice I got teaching Mama how to use a go-stick, hovering upward was easy.  I heard Mama call out "Cheater!" after me, but when I looked down I saw Mama was pulling out her own go-stick.

It's not like we couldn't have climbed up, it wasn't that hard a climb, but flying was so much easier.  It was also faster even for Mama.  I have to say, Mama must have been practicing in secret because when she caught up with me at the top, she looked almost serene sitting on her go-stick like a lady perched upon a comfortable seat.  Nothing like the near-panicked concentration, holding on for dear life look that usually accompanied Mama on a go-stick.  If I wasn't so proud to my very ear-tips of Mama's improvement, I would almost be jealous at how unflappable Mama is.

After the close dust and rock smell of the underground tunnel and cavern, the smell at the top of the incline was wonderous.  It was the dark, earthy smell of the forest floor.  The smell of life and renewal.  We had come at last to the end of our underground excursion.  The cavern let out under a tangle of fern fronds.  The subdued green light glowing through the fern fronds was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.  I decided that Kinderlings aren't meant to be underground.  The forest, with it's air and light, trees and green growing things is our life-blood.  Where we belong.  One whiff of the forest air, and I felt the tiredness drift away.  I was ready for whatever came next.

"Well, looks like we made good time.  It's just past noon."  Mama reported.  If that was the case, we started out from the Outcropping yesterday morning, and with only a few short rests here and there, made it all the way to the other side of the village in not quite a day and a half.  It didn't seem possible that a whole day had passed, but there it was.

"Being underground really messes with our perception of time doesn't it Mama."  I said.

"Yes, that and the lack of regularly timed meals."  Mama replied.  "I think we should take a rest and get some food in us."

Now that we were out of the cave, we didn't want to risk alerting anyone to our presence, especially this close to the village.  So we ate some of the mushroom stuffed travel bread that Tilly had given us.  I don't know how she made them, but they were wrapped in the biggest sage leaves from one of Tilly's herb gardens, and the bread had a hard, almost water-proof shell.  That wasn't even my favorite part though.  Sure, that hard crust was nice and crunchy and satisfying to crunch into, but inside was an almost pillow-like bread surrounding a cooked mushroom.  I had seen others try to make something similar, but their bread crust was never that crunchy, and almost inevitably the inside was a soupy, squishy mess.  I'd have to ask Mizzy if she could figure out how Tilly did it once I found her.  Tilly refused to let go of the secret.

Mizzy...  Was she ok?  Would she ever be ok again?  

I stuffed the rest of the mushroom bread in my mouth and started preparing to move on.

"Tandy?  Are you all right?"  Mama asked.

"Sorry Mama.  Eating made me think of Mizzy.  She must hate me, I should have been here for her."  Yep, I was crying again, and I didn't understand why.  I mean, I understood that I felt like I had an obligation as a friend to come to her aid.  I just didn't understand why it was eating at me so.

Bless Mama, because instead of asking a bunch of questions that I couldn't answer, she shoved her mushroom bread in her mouth. which was so un-Mama like it almost made me smile... almost... and started getting ready to go too.

"I had a talk with Zon before we left.  We'll have to go carefully, but hopefully we won't encounter too many Gorfs.  Zon said the Patrols that work the North side of the village keep the Gorfs cleared out as much as possible because the North side doesn't have the crevasse that the South side has, so a Gorf could just walk right into the village if it wanted to.  They don't usually, though, because the North Side Patrol keeps... kept... them too scared to come this close.

Soon we were ready to go.  Mama had us practicing packing up and going the day before we left the Outcropping also.  I've never been the fussy type that needed an hour in front of the mirror to leave the house, but I could tell that Mama's insistence on practice was really paying off.  Not only was I able to get ready to go in a fraction of the time, I did so in a way that I still knew where everything was in my pack, so anything I needed would be right at hand.

The trek to the forest edge was a quiet one. This part of the forest had larger, taller trees than the forest on the South side of the village that I was familiar with.  I'm sure Tommil would know what kind of tree they were, but I didn't.  They were huge though, with trunks that were bigger around than our home, and incredibly tall.  Underneath these huge trees, the way was relatively clear, with little of the bushes and undergrowth like the forest on the South side of the village.  

Then we came at last to the edge of the forest.  Mama lead the last part of the way, because she had been here before and knew right where she wanted to go.  I had to laugh when I saw the place Mama lead us to.  Under a rather large old tree, there was a hole.  When we entered, Mama barely fit, it became obvious that this was a play-fort made by Kinderling children, one of which had Tommil's talent for tree shaping.  

When I explored the fort a little more, I found that it had an outlet on the other side of the tree that let out under a berry bush.  The area under the bush was opened out so that it was comfortable, but shouldn't be noticeable from the outside.  Whoever built this fort really knew what they were doing.  The tree also had a ladder that lead up to a branch high up in the tree.  From that vantage point, you could see almost the entire village.